Birds at the Bottom of the Ocean
by feralhand
Summary: Changing a tire at the end of the world. Endverse AU ending, irresponsible blabbity gook.


The gunshot is still ringing in his ears when Dean realizes the Colt can't kill the Devil. Sam's body doesn't bleed. That son of a bitch is smiling in his brother's skin. To say Dean has trouble _looking at it_ does not begin to cover the power of doubt ripping through him.

It was as if, no matter how hard he pulls, he just can't get down off the cross. He failed. Again.

_Michael, you fuck. I know you're out there._ No, he doesn't. _I can't kill my brother, so how about you come kill yours?_

* * *

They blow out two tires outside Wanesville. Their commandeered police cruiser hobbles to a stop in the middle of a wooded highway.

"Son of a—both of them? Jesus Ch—Cas, if the roads fucked up, you _stop_."

Angel driving lessons were on Dean's to-do list, scheduled for some idyllic time when his nerves weren't burnt to ash and the camp wouldn't come undone if he postponed some errands. For this reason, Cas doesn't drive—at least, not unless the stars align.

Dean tears at the radio console until his aim was well enough to earn him the handheld mic. He thumbs the button and barks, "anybody copy?" a few times, and then is so demoralized by the lack of reply that he tilts into the console.

The driver's door creaks under Cas' weight. He leans in to pop the trunk and then squints at the radio's display. "It's the right channel." But there was no one on it. Switching hands, he reaches for the dial and rolls in the sequence for their secondary channel, then he ducks out.

"No," Dean said, reeling Cas back into the cab before he can get too far. "Are they punctured or is she on her rims?" He scrunches his nose at the smell of burnt rubber and every likelihood that they were, as usual, boned. Cas stares back levelly, not needing to double check the front end nor wanting to report the bad news.

Dean grimaces and brings the mic up again. "Somebody copy." He growls it like an order, like he's going to put his fist through the radio if the universe doesn't comply. _Just this once. Come on._

The receiver says nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and then it crackles around an in-and-out voice. The tension drains out of Dean's shoulders. It isn't appropriate at all the first thing out of his mouth is, "hallelujah." He hits the button on the mic next. "Say again."

The head vehicle of their convoy replies. It'll be half an hour before she can make it back down the hill to where the tow chain had busted, where Dean had told them to go on, that he and Cas would take the scenic route around the mountain.

"Give me that," Dean says, sliding down onto the cracked asphalt at the wheel well. It isn't a question, but Cas hesitates, watching Dean lean against the car and close his hand around the tire iron. There is a rifle offered in exchange. Cas doesn't take it straight off. Someone has to stand guard, that was important; but someone has to be certain Dean isn't going to pass out, and it wasn't going to be _Dean_.

"The answer is yes," Dean warns. "You _can_ still make this worse. If the Croats get the drop on us—" Cas takes the rifle, freeing Dean's hand so that he can wipe the run of blood from his left temple out of his eye.

It's a competition at this point—one neither of them wants to see play out—as to who, between the addict and the injured, can get a kill shot off at a quarter past two in the morning through tree cover. In the preliminary silence contest, Cas pulls ahead. Dean makes a racket every time he switches the tire iron's position, having to seek the bolt with his fingers and line it up with his fist. The socket slides off the rim twice, and the second time the iron hits the jack. _Clang._

Dean and Cas toss each other the same look. It isn't one of horror, as people in scary movies put on when they snap a twig or bump a table when hiding from the axe murderer. It isn't really surprise, because it's the apocalypse and they never count on getting home anymore. It is just, _well, that happened. Screw you, Murphy._

The rifle's muzzle tips as Cas fishes in his pocket for a loose pill. The humidity has made it a bit mush. Oh, Hell, _bitter_. "Say," he starts loudly, because they might as well make all kinds of noise now, "they did melt down the Colt." Deans rolling his eyes before the sentence is done.

Tugging on the tire with one hand, his words become clipped grunts. "We find another way." It was the only thing he could have said, even if he didn't think there was any other way to end the Devil. He couldn't leave Sam like th—

"Michael?"

"_No_." Dean set his eyes on Cas for a full minute, just to make sure he gets it this time. "That blade Alastair used to kill the reaper in Wyoming."

"That won't kill an angel. Or whatever Lucifer is now."

There is a bang and a clank and a string of curses. Dean jerkes his hand back out of the wheel well and the tire falls at an angle and hangs, stuck. After a while, Dean replies, "point. The hell is he?"

"Do you think he'd tell us if we asked?"

"What about that knife you used on Zach's cronies."

"Maybe."

Dean almost says something about consuming demon blood. There isn't much of a difference between letting an archangel wear his skin and drinking Sammy's go juice. It's wrong and pathetic and desperate, just on a different end of the line. He couldn't sacrifice his brother to that, but, if it was himself? Then again, what would it do to a former angel— "Gimme a hand."

It takes another ten minutes, but between the two of them—the half of each that is still there—they get the tire off. Cas hands off the rifle before going to the trunk, and Dean considers tasting the muzzle in his absence. _Stop it._ Cas used to say that. _You have to stop it._ Dean watches the woods. No Croats so far. Maybe not tonight. Maybe the Devil was enjoying their ill luck too much to kill them here and now. _I'm trying. I'm trying, Sam. I'd do anything._

Cas rolls the spare tire up to the front of the cruiser. Dean reaches for it and misses by a mile. It takes him three tries to find the real tire iron amidst the phantoms lying on the ground. At least the bleeding has stopped.

They're moving to the other side to start on the second tire when Cas starts on it again. "If they came back…"

The tire iron clangs hard against the side of the cruiser and then skitters off into the street. "When exactly did you start rooting for the home team again?" For all of Dean's solid indignation, Cas is liquid aching and he bends where Dean pushes through. The birdlike tilt of his head means Cas doesn't understand where he's lost Dean. He tips his head forward and raises his eyebrows like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then he pops another pill.

So, Cas knows. Dean gets it.

They never shared words on the topic. Dean has never admitted out loud to anyone that he… that it didn't take long at all (something like thirty years? Like a few miles to the nearest crossroads?) for him to break. Because he always breaks. It's just, this time, no one was watching. The angels weren't listening. He's broken with nothing to show for it, and here's Cas, able to see the cracks in Dean's composure even as drug-addled and world weary as he is.

He holds a grudge and answers, "then Michael kills the Devil and this all stops."

"Michael kills your brother," Cas says like he's correcting him. "Depending on who's still alive, he kills everyone at camp."

Dean leers. "Probably everyone in this hemisphere. Yeah, we've had this conversation."

"And you don't care?" _Yeah, we've had this conversation._

_Oh, I care._ _I care a lot. _"No. Not if I can stop it."

_What if you can't?_

* * *

Michael.

It's like …

It's like he's salted and burned his insides.

He's buried himself in his own skin.

It gets worse.

Time folds. Angels creep out of the creases like silverfish skittering out of old shoeboxes. Dean wants it to be over, but he can see like Michael sees. It never ends. Eternity. He stops breathing.

* * *

The remnants of team go-in-through-the-front are locked down into a stairwell when the garden lights up outside. The gunfire ceases simply due to the surprise. Then there's a flashbang.

No. It's Cas.

A lot of the people in the camp don't believe he was an angel at one point. They don't believe in angels, even with the Devil walking the Earth. It's not like the topic comes up much. Maybe they believe now, before they die.

Cas doesn't die. He feels like he might, though.

The building blows. Holding onto a vessel when he's not really sure there's anything else _to him _is a strange experience. There's really only one way to answer that question.

Dean and Sam are fighting. Cas knows this without being able to see it. He knows it's not actually Dean and Sam. He knows it's what Dean has come to want, though. As much as a bird wants to see the bottom of the ocean, anyway.

Grace burns like a snake bite. It's what he has always imagined death by holy fire to be. Maybe he's too human to cope. Angels could be some monster Dean would want to kill with their own venom. It would be helpful, Cas thinks, given that Dean generally runs afoul of angels, if he could write down whether or not this strategy works, but…

He lies on the ground curled into himself, shielding his body from the light with his wings. Oh, wings. _I remember this_.

There's reverb in the air when it's over. Death, just death. Demons, angels, humans, and everything else. It's like watching stars flicker out in the night sky. Their brother dies. _Am I a part of Them?_ Each point of light on the face of creation is a blip of warmth, and slowly the earth is growing colder. One by one.

Michael cuts down the last Croats. He comes to stand in front of Cas. Cas won't lift his head, he won't open his eyes. He knows Michael by divine sensation. He won't let him be Dean.

"Castiel," Dean's voice says.

_Is he a part of Them?_

The hood of the Impala is lukewarm in the winter sun when Dean wakes. His phone is playing music in his pocket. He doesn't remember driving this highway. He knows full well he didn't stop the car and climb onto the hood and take a nap in the middle of the road. Everything feels tilted at a weird angle. The car is jacked up on one side.

* * *

Author's Notes: I have no idea. Absolutely none


End file.
